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WASHINGTON 



ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



UNION LEAGUE CLUB 

OF CHICAGO 



BY 



GEORGE F. HOAR, 

FEBRUARY 23, 1903. 



PRESS OF GIBSON BROS. 

13th and Penka. Avb. 
1903. 



WASHINGTON 



ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



UNION LEAGUE CLUB 

OF CHICAGO 



^BY 



GEORGE F. HOAR, 

FEBRUARY 23, 1903. 



'^asliiugtan, g. ®. 

PRESS OF GIBSON BROS., 

13th and Penna. Avk. 

1903. 









t Ap'07 



ADDRESS. 



There is no man living anywhere, with whatever lionors his 
life may have been crowned, to whom it would not be an 
added honor to be in\dted to address this brilliant company 
in this famous cit\' on this liistoric anniversary. 

Chicago is conspicuous among the great cities of the world 
for many things. In two things she stands unrivalled. 

Great as she is to-day, wonderful as has been her past, 
yet she is, bej^ond all other communities, the city of the 
future. She may well look forward with an assured and 
sober confidence to the time when the scepter, which passed 
away from Rome, shall pass away from London also, and 
shall be •within her grasp. 

Chicago is foremost among American cities, foremost, so far 
as I know, among the cities of the world, in the great \drtue 
of pubhc spirit. If we can judge by the report of her, the 
citizen of Chicago seems to feel, to a degree not found else- 
where, that her honor is his honor, that her prosperity is 
his prosperity, and that all he is and has is at her service. 
It is of this temper that ci\dc greatness is born. 

Yet to a people having the right that 3^ou have to be 
proud of their present, and looking forward as you do with 
a confident courage and hope to a great hereafter, there is a 
peculiar and special danger. That is the danger of Pro- 
^dncialism, the danger of that spirit which is impatient of 
the authoi'ity of the past, and of the contemporary opinion 
of mankind. Self-satisfaction, disregard of tradition and 
precedent and authority, pride in being a law to themselves, 
these are the besetting sins of successful and self-made 



men who have achie^'ed fortune and greatness rapidly. 
They are hkely to be the besetting sins also of cities and of 
States and Nations that have achieved greatness and suc- 
cess, as you have, \nth a wonderful rapidit3^ 

There is no Pro\'incialism like the Provincialism which 
confines a man to his own time. There is no intel- 
lectual dullness like the intellectual dullness which comes 
from the contentment of an absolute self-satisfaction. 
There is no man and no communit}^ so certain of failure as 
the man or the community to which the past can speak no 
lesson. But, on the other hand, re^'erence for the past, a 
mind open to the lessons taught by other countries and other 
places, which are in some sort to all of us as a posterity, 
make even an Insular and Pro^'incial nature Continental 
and Imperial. 

So, gentlemen, it is a sign of profoundest wisdom, it is an 
admirable augury of happiest omen to Chicago, that this 
influential Societj' selects the birthda}^ of George Washington 
for special commemoration, and means to keep his linea- 
ments and character before her people, especially before her 
youth. 

It is well that such a conmiunitv still makes the birth- 
day of Washington its great anniversary. Washington, 
too, did his work well in his own time. He was not without 
proper respect for ancestr}-, and proper care for posterity. 
But he did not dwell too much on either. He was thinking 
always of the duty which was present and at hand. As 
Emerson said of him: "He was up to the top of his boots in 
his own meadow." 

I have sometimes thought that we might improve some- 
what our method of celebrating the jjirthdays of our heroes 
and statesmen. Instead of inviting some living orator, 
let us, as near as may be, invite the man himself to the cele- 
bration. If the people are considering some question in- 



volving the public welfare, or the fate of the republic, or 
Avhat, if not the same thing, are higher and dearer yet, the 
honor and the conscience of the Republic, let some faithful 
searcher gather everything the man we would honor has 
left us on that subject in the way of example or of precept. 
If the question be whether we shall enter upon a career of 
foreign dominion, let us celebrate Washington's birthday 
by recalling what he said on that subject. If the 
question be what constitutes lawful reason for war; or 
what is the duty of good citizensliip when the country is 
in a war in which it is wrong; or what are the rights which 
belong everywhere to that being which we call a people; or 
what is the line of distinction between power and right, 
when a strong nation has to deal with a weak one ; or whether 
it be lawful for one people to subdue another to its will; 
what consent of the governed, if any, be necessary to the 
exercise of just powers of government; whether there can 
be taxation rightfully without representation; whether men 
may be lawfully held in a State as subjects and not citizens — 
would it not be well, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, to 
gather ever}i:hing he said on those subjects, and what he 
did when charged with public responsibilities? Would it 
not be well on Webster's birthday, to call him up to bear his 
testimony as in visible presence; or, on Jefferson's birth- 
day, to hear what he had to say about it; or, on Sumner's 
birthday, to listen again to the counsel of that dauntless 
and righteous spirit? In that way the silent lips of the 
might}^ dead will seem ever speaking their high commands 
to their countrymen. In that way every generation will 
still live, and Washington and Webster and Lincoln may 
still always be present on the spots with which they were 
familiar in life, still sitting, still deliberating, still debating. 
But I will not run that risk to-day. Washington's own 
words, far better than my own, would be undoubtedly his 



most fitting memorial. But I might be thought to convey 
by indirection a condemnation of some thing or somebody 
which might be thought out of place in a celebration from 
which current politics are supposed to be banished. 

There is one unerring test of true greatness, whether in 
literature, or in science, or thought, or action, or character. 
That is. that it seems to be cotemporaneous with all the 
generations. The Hebrew Scriptures, the essays of Bacon, 
the plays of Shakespeare, Homer, and Virgil, and Dante, the 
character and glory of Alfred and Lincoln and Frajiklin, 
Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, and the Declaration of 
Independence, speak to us to-day freshly, and without 
loss of effect by reason of remoteness of time. They would 
have made a like impression in the time of the Hebrew or 
the Greek, or the Roman Commonwealth. They will speak 
with like effect hereafter in all coming time to any gen- 
eration that hath ears to hear. 

That is conspicuously true of Washington. If you were 
to read of him in Plutarch there would be no sense that he 
was out of place. He would still be the most perfect of 
Plutarch's men. If you were to read of him on the page 
that tells the story of Alfred or the Bruce, or St. Louis 
of France, or the greatest and best of the men of the Hebrew 
Commonwealth, there AA'Ould be no feeling that he did not 
belong to his age, but only that there was a better and 
purer and greater Alfred or Bruce or St. Louis or Hebrew 
Monarch. So I believe there never will be a period in all 
coming time when a character like that of Washington will 
excite a sense of incongruity, or of antiquity, but only the 
natural feeling that a character of supreme excellence has 
been bestowed by God upon man. 

It is the great good fortune of the people of America, 
especially of the youth of America, that we have for our 
National hero a character whom they can take as a model 



of behavior in every condition, every transaction, every 
occupation in life. I cannot think of any question of 
morahty, of courtesy, or noble and elevated behavior, of 
expediency in the conduct of doubtful and difficult affairs, 
which a young man or an old man could not safely answer 
by asking himself and telling himself what George Wash- 
ington would have done in a like case. I do not know of 
any other nation on earth that possesses or has possessed 
such a model. 

I need not dwell upon the vast advantage of such an ex- 
ample over a mere lifeless code of general rules for the con- 
duct of life. Indeed it is not necessary to remind you here 
and in this presence that the Author of our religion has 
directed that mankind be taught Christian principles and 
Christian character by a great Exemplar. The power of 
the great religious orders in the great churches, a power 
which is among the wonders of history, is due largely to the 
example of the saints who founded them, or for whom they 
are named. 

Now in claiming for George Washington that he was an 
example of all excellence which the American youth may 
with safety take as his model of character and conduct for 
every condition and every transaction in life, do not let 
me be suspected of falling into our National habit of ex- 
aggeration. I wish to cite a few tributes from, if not hos- 
tile, at least impartial sources of the highest authority. 

There is no time to-day to cite much of the overwhelming 
and concurrent testimony of great Englishmen, statesmen, 
and writers of history, and of great authorities on the Con- 
tinent, to the primacy of George Washington among man- 
kind. The only name likely to be thought of anywhere 
for parallel or comparison is that in whose glory we also 
have an inherited title to share — that of Alfred. 

We need have no misgivings about Washington. By 



8 

this time, more than a century from his death, his Ufe at 
home and in pubhc is well known. The case is all in. 

"Whatever record leap to light, he never shall be shamed." 

The youth of America need not depend on American 
authority for an estimate of this supreme and faultless 
character. The great historians of other countries are 
not behind ours in their tributes to his greatness. Earl 
Russell said of him: 

"Without the genius of Julius Csesar or Napoleon Bona- 
parte, he has a far purer fame, as his ambition was of a 
higher and holier nature. In modern history no man had 
done such great things without the soil of selfishness or the 
stain of a groveling ambition. Csesar, Cromwell, Napo- 
leon, attained a higher elevation, but the love of dominion 
was the spur that drove them on. John Hampden, Wil- 
liam Russell, Algernon Sydney, may have had motives 
as pure, and an ambition as unstained; but they fell. To 
George Washington nearly alone in modern times has it 
been given to accomplish a wonderful revolution, and yet 
to remain to all future times the theme of a people's grati- 
tude, and an example of virtuous and beneficent power." 

Lord Erskine, the greatest of English advocates, in- 
scribed one of his works to Washington, declaring, "You 
are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence." 
Charles James Fox said of him in the House of Commons, 
"The illustrious man before whom all borrowed great- 
ness sinks into insignificance." Lord Brougham, at the 
close of his public life, repeated the estimate he had given 
near the beginning of it: "Until time shall be no more, 
will a test of the progress which our race has made in wis- 
dom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the 
immortal name of Washington." And again, at another 
time. Lord Brougham says, " Washington was the greatest 
man of ovu* own or any age." 



9 

At another time Fox says of him : " A character of vir- 
tues so happily tempered by one another, and so wholly un- 
alloyed with any vices as that of Washington is hardly to 
be found on the pages of history." 

Mr. Green, the author of the history of the English 
people, says of him: 

"No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's 
life. Washington was grave and courteous in address; 
his manners were simple and unpretending; his silence and 
the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self- 
mastery. But there was little in his outer bearing to reveal 
the grandeur of soul which lifts his figure with all the simple 
majesty of an ancient statue out of the smaller passions and 
meaner impulses of the world around him. It was only 
as the weary fight went on that the colonists discovered, 
however slowly and imperfectly, the greatness of their 
leader, his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence 
under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or 
defeat, the patience with which he waited, the quickness 
and hardness with which he struck, the lofty and serene 
sense of duty that never swerved from its task through 
resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace 
felt the touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save 
that of guarding the freedom of his fellow countrymen, and 
no personal longing save that of returning to his own fire- 
side when their freedom was secured. It was almost un- 
consciously that men learned to cling to Washington with 
a trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to 
regard him with a reverence which still hushes us in pres- 
ence of his memory." 

No other man uttered the best thought of Scotland as 
it was uttered by Robert Burns. When somebody in his 
presence proposed the health of Pitt, I think then Prime 
Minister, Burns said, ''I give the health of a better man, 
George Washington." This was not very long after Burns 



/ 



10 

had given, during the American War, the toast, " May our 
success in the present war be equal to the justice of our 
cause." 

Count Herzburg, for thirty years Frederick the Great's 
famous minister of foreign affairs said, that Washington 
surpassed men in his great virtues and quahties, even the 
most celebrated of antiquity. 

Lord Bjnron's tribute is well known: 

Where may the wearied eye repose 

When gazing on the great, 
Where neither guilty glory glows 

Nor despicable state? 
Yes, One, the first , the last, the best, 
The Cincinnatus of the West 

Whom Envy dared not hate, 
Bequeathed the name of Washington, 
To make men blush there was but one. 

"No one who has not been in England can have a just 
idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for 
General Washington. It is a common observation that 
he is not only the most illustrious, but the most meri- 
torious character that has yet appeared." 
Rufus King to General Hamilton, 1797. 

Mr. Gladstone said that Washington was the purest 
figure in history. He declares: 

"If, among all the pedestals supplied by history for 
public characters of extraordinar}^ nobility and purity, 
I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required, 
at a moment's notice, to name the fittest occupant for it, 
I think my choice, at an}- time during the last fort}-- 
five years, would have lighted, and it would now light, 
upon W^ashington. " 
i_ Talleyrand said of him: 

His fame is bej-ond com})arison with that of others." 



11 

Even China has placed in his monvinient a stone which 
declares: ''Can any man of ancient or modern times fail 
to pronounce Washington peerless?" 

I will add one other tribute of exquisite beauty, from an 
American source. It is from the most fastidious of critics, 
Fisher Ames: 

"Consider for a moment, what a reputation it was; 

such as no man ever before possessed by so clear a title, 

and in so high a degree. His fame seemed in its purity 

to exceed even its brightness. Office took honor from his 

acceptance, but conferred none. Ambition stood awed 

and darkened by his shadow. For where, through the 

wide earth, was the man so vain as to dispute precedence 

With him; or what were the honors that could make the 

possessor Washington's superior? Refined and complex 

:is the ideas of virtue are, even the gross could discern in 

lis life the infinite superiority of her rewards. Mankind 

Derceived some change in their ideas of greatness; the 

splendor of power, and even of the name of conqueror, 

liiad grown dim in their eyes. They did not know that 

m'^ashington could augment his fame; but they knew and 

Ifelt that the world's wealth, and its empire, too, would 

be a bribe far beneath his acceptance." 

Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. 2, p. 78. 

Probably no American public man of Washington's 
time — certainly none who deserved the name of states- 
man — differed so entirely in character, mental traits, and 
political opinion from Washington as Thomas Jefferson. 
Jefferson left the Cabinet of his great chief of his own ac- 
cord to become the leader of the party opposed to his 
policies — a party which took possession of the government 
four years after Washington's retirement and a little more 
than one year after Washington's death. But Jefferson, 
late in his own life, when it was suggested to him that the 



12 

fame of Washington might lessen with the lapse of years, 
looked up to the sky and answered: "Washington's fame 
will go on increasing until the brightest constellation in 
yonder heavens is called by his name." 

So we have the right to say of him as the old Monk 
said of King Arthur: 

"The Old World knows not his peer, nor mil the future 
show us his. equal ; he alone towers over other kings, better 
than the past ones, and greater than those that are to be." 

If you wish to make a study of this great man you will 
do well not to confine yourselves to any one biography. 
When you have read carefully the best lives of Washington 
you will have become familiar not only with the greatest 
human character in history, but with a historic epoch of 
large and enduring influence upon the destinies of mankind. 
Several historians of great distinction and of great ^^ariet}^ 
of intellectual quality, but all of the first rank, have made the 
life of Washington their theme. You will do well to study 
them all, perhaps to study them all at the same time. 
When you deal with a great event, political or military, it 
may be well to have the narrative of it as told by each of 
these authors in the mind at the same time. 

The first of these in the order of time, as in intellectual 
rank, is the life of Washington by John Marshall, the great 
Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall was a grave 
and serious-minded man, indifferent to the graces of style, 
or to the art by which an author entertains his readers 
and relieves the tediousness of a narrative without depart- 
ing from sobriety and propriety. His account of Washing- 
ton's early life and the military transactions of the Revolu- 
tionary war are lacking in spirit and picturesqueness, 
although absolutely trustworthy, as the character of the 
narrator would make us sure. Marshall's account of the 
political history of the country from the close of the Revolu- 
tion to Washington's death in 1799, is that of a very great 



13 

statesman and Constitutional lawyer who himself had a 
large share in the transactions of which he has to tell. No 
other man who ever lived was so capal:)le of understanding 
the great principles settled in that day, on which the en- 
during foundations of the Republic are builded. He en- 
joyed Washington's fullest confidence. He belonged to 
Washington's own State. He was a leader in the legisla- 
ture of Virginia, where the struggles were almost as impor- 
tant as those in either House of Congress. He was one of 
the leaders in the Virginia Convention that adopted the 
Constitution, a convention on whose decision the fate of 
the Constitution largely depended. Washington offered 
him a seat in his Cabinet, which he declined. He offered 
him the place of Envoy to France, which he declined. He 
was afterward a member of Congress, Secretary of State 
and, as you know. Chief Justice of the United States for 
thirty-four years. It is hardly too much to say that but for 
his great judgments the Constitution of the United States 
could not successfully have worked in practice as a mecha- 
nism of government. But as is commonly the case with 
biographies written so near the lifetime of the subject, the 
author had not access to a great deal of the material which 
afterward came to hght, necessary for a perfect execution 
of his task. 

Jared Sparks, the editor of Washington's writings in 
twelve volumes, and also the author of a life, is perhaps 
unequaled among our historic investigators in the unerring 
accuracy of historic judgment. He lacks grace of style, 
enthusiasm, spirit and imagination. But he was the most 
conscientious and industrious of investigators. He had 
access not only to AVashington's own papers but to the 
family papers of a great many of his contemporaries. He 
rummaged the National archives and those of most if 
not all of the old thirteen States, and he knew well what 
was important and what was unimportant. He sticks to 



14 

his fact like a mathematician. What he says is true is 
true, and you need not trouble yourself to inquire further. 

Washington Irving .brought to his task industry, in- 
tegrity, the charm of that matchless style which makes 
him still accounted, so far as that is concerned, the fore- 
most of American prose writers, or in that respect at least 
to share that lofty place with Hawthorne alone. Mr. 
Irving liked to delight and entertain as well as to instruct 
his readers. In his pages Washington steps down from 
his pedestal, and while there is nothing found which tar- 
nishes that pure fame, the hero leaves the rank of demigods 
and mingles with mortal men. 

Edward Everett also has written a brief life, prepared 
originally for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and expanded 
into a small volume. You can read it in two or three 
hours. It will repay perusal as a good summing up of 
the great career of the Father of his Country, although 
there is nothing in it to enhance the fame either of the 
subject or the author. It is a pity that Lord Macaulay, 
on whose recommendation Mr. Everett was asked to 
write that Memoir, could not have undertaken it himself. 
But if I cannot speak with enthusiasm of Mr. Everett's 
life of Washington, I can hardly find language to express 
myself, in commending to you, and to the youth of the 
present generation, Mr. Everett's masterly oration upon 
the same theme. It is, so far as I know, and, so far as I 
can judge, foremost among the masterpieces of eulogistic 
oratory in any tongue or in any generation. It was un- 
dertaken by Mr. Everett for the purpose of purchasing 
and preserving Mt. Vernon. It was delivered and repeated 
in the chief cities and large towns of the country and, 
with the proceeds of a few other lectures and essays by Mr. 
Everett on kindred subjects, yielded about ninety thou- 
sand dollars of the fund of one hundred thousand required 
to redeem Mt. Vernon. Mr. Everett sketches the Intel- 



lectual and physical character of Washington, from his 
splendid youth, a model of manly strength and beauty, 
perfect in the qualities and accomplishments of the gentle- 
man and the soldier, but wise and thoughtful beyond his 
years, inspiring at the outset of his career that love and 
confidence which are usually earned only by a long life of 
service, through all the acts of that mighty drama of which 
he was the foremost character, the observed of all eyes, 
the beloved of all true American hearts, shaping and wielding 
the destinies of his country in her great birthtime, down 
to his death at Mount ^^ernon, in his own home, the wife of 
his youth by his side, amid the benedictions and the 
sorrow of his countrymen. The story is depicted by the 
marvelous genius of the great artist on a canvas that shall 
endure as long as the fame of Washington himself. I 
should like to repeat to you some of the great passages from 
that great oration, especially the contrast between Mt. Ver- 
non, the simple dwelling place of America's illustrious hero 
and Father, the home of George Washington and Martha, 
his beloved, loving and faithful wife, and the splendor of 
Blenheim House, the monumental pile where the gratitude of 
England poured itself out in unrestrained lavishness upon 
her great warrior and victor; and the beautiful close where 
the orator conceives the fame of Washington passing from 
the narrow strip of territory fringing the Atlantic shore, 
which was all his country occupied when he died, from the 
southern plains to the western lakes, beyond the Ohio, be- 
yond the Mississippi, along with the stupendous trail of im- 
migration from east to west, which, bursting into States as it 
moved westward, was then already threading the western 
prairies, swarming through the portals of the Rocky 
Mountains and winding down their slopes to the Pacific, 
and then in the prophetic imagination of the orator, trav- 
eling with the Silver Queen of heaven through sixty de- 
grees of longitude, and not parting company with her till 



16 

she walks in her brightness through the golden gate of 
California, and passes serenely on to hold midnight court 
with her Australian stars. 

Mr. Everett adds that there and only there, in barbarous 
archipelagoes, as yet untrodden by civilized man, the 
name of Washington is unknown, and there, too, when 
they swarm with enlightened millions, new honors shall 
be paid with oiu-s to his memory. 

But the rich silver tones of the trumpet voice of the 
unequaled orator, speaking as Pericles might be conceived 
to have spoken to an Athenian audience in the great day 
of Grecian eloquence, still linger in my memory and forbid 
the sacrilegious attempt. 

But, after all, among the elaborate biographies of 
Washington the best portraiture of him in literature is 
the life of him by my colleague, Henry Cabot Lodge. It 
may be trusted thoroughly as to its facts and its judg- 
mtens. A flood of light has been poured in upon the sub- 
ject by the material which has been uncovered since the 
time of Marshall and Sparks and Irving. The memoir is 
full enough to tell the story of the great and important 
transactions of Washington's life, and still compact 
enough to retain its hold on the interest and attention of 
the reader from the beginning to the end. Mr. Lodge has 
a statesman's capacity to deal with and to judge of the con- 
cerns of State, the enthusiasm of an orator, the literary 
skill of a trained and practiced writer, and the industry 
of a thorough historic investigator. If you have time but 
for one of these biographies, I commend to you that of 
Mr. Lodge as, on the whole, the best, although he has to 
contend with such great competitors as Marshall and 
Sparks and Irving. 

You should also make yourselves familiar, not only for a 
description of Washington, but as a masterpiece of splendid 
oratory, with the almost forgotten oration of Fisher Ames, 



17 

delivered before the Massachusetts Legislature just after 
Washington's death. It is a tribute of exquisite beauty, 
from an American source. Mr. Ames was the most fastid- 
ious of judges and of critics. But he knew Washington, 
in whose first administration he was, although a young 
man and in feeble health, a great Federalist leader. His 
speech on Jay's Treaty ranks with that of John Marshall 
on the case of Jonathan Robbins, and Webster's reply to 
Hayne, as one of the three greatest speeches ever delivered 
in either House of the American Congress. It is said that 
that speech and the speech of Chief Justice Marshall, which 
I just mentioned, are the only speeches ever made in the 
American Congress that converted a hostile majority on a 
great political question on which the House was divided 
by party lines. Mr, Ames's thought is profound and 
wise as that of Burke, his style full of life and spirit, im- 
pressive and sententious like that of the Proverbs of Solo- 
mon. Image crowds upon image in the inexhaustible 
fertility of his mind, keeping the mind of the hearer and 
the reader constantly stimulated with expectation and 
curiosity, and creating constant surprise and delight. 

I think I ought also to commend to your attention two 
very remarkable addresses by the late Robert C. Winthrop. 
He delivered the oration at the laying of the corner-stone of 
the Washington Monument, July 4, 1848, and again an 
oration in commemoration of its completion February 
22, 1885, thirty-seven years thereafter. It is a curious 
coincidence that he associated his name forever with the 
beginning and the finishing of that monument, as Mr. 
Webster is associated by two wonderful orations with the 
foundation and the completion of the monument at Bunker 
Hill. Mr. Winthrop's addresses are in all respects worthy 
of comparison with those of Webster. These four orations 
will stand together at the very head of that department of 
oratorv. 



18 

When you have read these hves and read also Washing- 
ton's own great addresses — his farewell to the Governors 
of the States when he laid down his commission in 1783 ; 
his Farewell Address when he laid down the Presidency in 
1797 — you will have seen Washington as he was. You 
will see him as if you had gazed upon a photograph of his 
very soul. You will know by heart the greatest man in 
all history ; one of the very few and the greatest of the very 
few great men who have lived wholly for their country and 
not at all for themselves, and who, as a great orator says, 
appear in human annals ' ' like five or six lighthouses on as 
many thousand miles of coast." 

It was said by Richard Steele of a beautiful and accom- 
plished Englishwoman, Lady Elizabeth Hastings, that to 
love her was a liberal education. If you have studied and 
taken into your hearts and souls the character of Washing- 
ton as depicted by these great authorities, you have a 
liberal education in the essentials of American citizenship. 
You have laid the foundation in character for anything that 
can be demanded of you by your country in war or in peace, 
for soldier, statesman, citizen. 

Now in commending to you the sources by which you 
can possess yourself of a just conception of the great char- 
acter of the Father of our Country from an original investi- 
gation, I have left little space to say anything about him 
from myself. But surely it is better so. What can I say 
which is worth saying upon such a theme? Washington 
died one hundred and four years ago next December, 
From that day to this his life and his praise have been the 
theme of oratory and poetry the country through, on 
every recurring anniversary of his birthday which, like 
the birthday of the country itself, is one of our two great 
national holidays. 

The designer of the noble shaft which towers above the 
city which bears his name has with rare felicity designed 



19 

that emblem of the simple and majestic character of Wash- 
ington. There is no ornament or sculpture or delicate carv- 
ing to attract or fascinate the eye. Simplicity, grandeur, 
just proportion, strength, endurance are its characteristics, 
as they were his characteristics. It must ever take a high 
rank among great and majestic pul^lic works. In a clear 
morning, when the sky is full of light or some delicate 
cloud moves over its summit, far above the streets and 
towers and spires of the city, its shining point suggests the 
lines of the Englishman, Doctor Aiken, written while Wash- 
ington was yet living : 

Point of that p>'ramid, whose soHd base 
Rests firmly founded in a Nation's trust, 
Which, while the gorgeous palace sinks in dust, 
Shall stand sublime, and fill its ample space. 

Think how poor were Washington's resources! During 
a large part of the time when he was besieging the British 
army in Boston, he had scarceh^ powder enough to fire 
a salute. His few cannon had been dragged by oxen 
across New England from Ticonderoga. He had no money 
to pay his soldiers ; no drill-officers to teach his raw recruits 
military discipline; no military text-books for his engi- 
neers. His life was almost a solitude amid the jealousies 
and strifes which existed in that day, in quite as large 
degree as now, among his generals and officers, and (what 
has happil)^ passed by now), among the troops of the dif- 
ferent colonies. The inexhaustible pecuniary resources 
of England promised an inexhaustible supply of troops, 
native or mercenary. His great antagonists had the sup- 
port of a powerful navy. I would not undervalue the 
navy of the revolution, whose great service to the cause 
of independence has been so much overlooked. Indeed, 
it is doubtful whether without it the war for liberty could 
have been brought to a successful close. But its chief 
service was in destroying English commerce and not as an 



20 

aid to our military operations. So in the time of framing 
the Constitution and in administering the government for 
the first eight years, Washington had nowhere to look 
either for example or for instruction. All the paths he 
trod had to be broken out by himself and his great com- 
panions and associates. We who find our path broken, 
macadamized, leveled, blazed by the sure and safe precedents 
of one hundred and twenty-five years can hardly under- 
stand the difficulties which beset Washington. And }'et, 
in his whole life, from the time when, but a youth of 
twenty-four, he gave his wise but vain counsel to General 
Braddock, and brought home all the laurels of that most 
disastrous expedition, to the time when, full of years and 
honors, he left to his countrymen his Farewell Address — 
that almost inspired political Bible, the adherence to \ 
which ever has brought and ever will bring to us safety, \ 
prosperity, and glory, the departure from which is the j 
path to danger, ruin and shame — he never made a m\^y 
take and never gave unwise counsel to his countrymen. 

There are some characters, unhappil}^ few, of whom we 
never think as struggling with or conquering temptation. 
Sin did not beset them. I suppose this was never yet 
literally and perfectly true of any man or woman. Yet it 
was as nearly true of George Washington as of any man 
or woman. Integrity, unselfish and unambitious service, 
industry that sought no repose while it remained to be 
done, unhesitating self-sacrifice, purity not only unsullied 
but untempted, were all his. The temptation to evil never 
seems to have beset that lofty nature, nor besieged that 
impregnable fortress. The Devil is an ass. But he never 
was such an ass as to waste his time tempting George 
Washington. 

Washington's style, in general, is somewhat artificial, 
with a little tendency on ordinarj' occasions to the some- 
what inflated, latinized diction of which Doctor Johnson 



21 

had set the fashion in his time. But he rises often, when 
he forgets the language and is intent on the thought, into 
a noble and vigorous speech. Some of the best examples 
of good English are to be foimd in the untutored speech 
and writing of boys. AVashington compiled Or copied or 
composed, in early youth, a series of rules of behavior in 
company and conversation which ends with a maxim cer- 
tainly not to be improved upon either in style or sub- 
stance: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little 
spark of celestial fire — conscience." 

Mr. Winthrop, with that curiosa felicitas both of thought 
and phrase, for which he is unsurpassed among the orators 
of the generation which has just left the stage, said in his 
last great public address, speaking to the youth of the 
country: "Keep ever in your mind and before your mind's 
eye the loftiest standard of character. Strive to approxi- 
mate that lofty standard, and measure your integrity and 
your patriotism by your nearness to it or your departure 
from it. The prime meridian of universal longitude on 
sea or land may be at Greenwich or at Paris or where you 
will. The prime meridian of pure, disinterested, patri- 
otic, exalted human character, will be marked forever by 
yonder Washington obelisk." 

Washington's virtues were the corner-stone virtues. 
They were the virtues which lie at the foundation of all 
civil society as well as of noble individual character It is 
not these which commonly excite the imagination or strike 
the fancy. It is not these which delight audiences in the 
portrayal. Poets celebrate the beauty of the morning, 
the Assyrian sunrise and the Paphian sunset, the fragrance 
of the rose, the verdure of the grass, the softness of the 
gale. They do not write odes to gravitation or to mathe- 
matics, or to order, or to the great laws which preserve 
health. So we do not find that veracity, judgment, pru- 
dence, disinterestedness, justice, sobriety, stir the blood 



22 

and quicken the pulse when we talk of them. But they are 
the virtues to which human life owes its safety and human 
society its civilization. 

I would say it in all reverence (surely we have a right 
to say it), if it be true that God has made man in his own 
image, and if it be true that divinity has come to the earth 
to be an example to humanity, then it is not impious for 
us to claim that humanity has sometimes attained some- 
thing of the divine image in which it was created, and has 
been able to copy the divine Example to imitate which it 
is invited. The virtues of Washington are the virtues which 
we ascribe in our humble, imperfect and faraway concep- 
tion to divinity. 

Think of his absolute veracity! He conducted with 
his own hand a vast correspondence, enough to tax to its 
uttermost the strength of mind and brain and body of an 
athlete even if he had had to bear no other burden of 
public care. His published correspondence fills many large 
volumes, and there is a great deal, I suppose, still unpub- 
lished. But there is not a trace of duplicity, of conceal- 
ment, of saying one thing to one man and another to 
another, of assurances of respect or goodwill that do not 
come from the heart, such as, I am sorry to say, disfigure 
the correspondence of some of his famous and honored 
cotemporaries. The little fable invented by Weems, his 
enthusiastic biographer, has become the standing jest of 
many a generation of irreverent boys. But nobody ever 
doubted or ever will doubt that George Washington could 
not tell a lie, could not act a lie, could not think a lie; that 
a lie could not live in his presence, or that all falsehood 
and dissimulation would slink abashed and confounded 
from the gaze of those pure eyes and from that perfect 
witness. 

"I do not remember," said Washington in 1786, "that 
in the course of my life I ever forfeited my word, or broke 
a promise made to any one." 



23 

" 1 never say anything of a man that I have the smallest 
scruple of saying to him." 

This virtue of absolute veracity deserves to rank highest 
among those which our humanity can attain. Men of all 
civilized nations pay an unconscious tribute to it when 
they resent the imputation of falsehood as even a greater 
affront than the charge of cowardice. Indeed falsehood is 
the very essence of cowardice. The man who lies, lies, 
usually, because he is afraid to tell the truth, because he does 
not dare to stand by his action or his thought. The great 
nations of history, the great characters of history, are those 
who are most famed for the supreme virtue of truth. The 
only heroes of the nation from whom we derive our own 
lineage, who deserve to be named in the same day with 
Washington are the Englishman King Alfred, and the 
Irishman, the Duke of Wellington. King Alfred was 
called "the truth teller." Wellington was called the 
truth lover. 

Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named. 
Truth-lover was our English Duke. 

He had a weighing and balancing mind. His intellect 
was like a pair of accurately adjusted scales. He did not 
often, especially in civil affairs, originate the policies upon 
which he acted. But he listened carefully and patiently 
to every counsel from which he could get instruction, and 
then brought it in the end to the sure test of his own un- 
erring judgment. He weighed the advice of his great 
counsellors, the claims of contending parties, and of Jeffer- 
son and Hamilton and Adams and Pickering, in a balance as 
infallible as the golden scales which the Eternal hung forth 
in Heaven. 

a "Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign" 

in which, according to Milton, the arch-rebel read and 
knew his fate. 



24 

There are young men before me who I am sure aspiie to 
take hereafter an honorable part in the service of the 
country. You have not received the priceless advantage 
and blessing of American citizenship as beggars or mendi- 
cants who receive a benefit which they never return. 
What your country has given you }ou mean to return 
again to her. You mean, in the simple language of the 
oath taken by the humblest official, "to defend her against 
all enemies, foreign or domestic. " The foreign enemy is not 
likely to put your manhood to any severe proof, or it will 
be a proof of your physical courage alone. The enemy 
that will demand your moral courage for the encounter is 
the domestic enemy. He will appear under many names, 
in various guise. But the unerring test by which ycu 
will detect him will be by comparing his principles, pur- 
poses and character with those of George Washington. 
If any man tell you that the counsels of George Washing- 
ton have grown musty and rusty; that they are not 
for large nations, but only for little ones; that, as a great 
newspaper said the other day, a man who is now in the 
company of George Washington is in bad company, be- 
cause his policies and counsels are bad for the America 
of the present day — mark and distrust that man as the 
domestic enemy of your country. He may be sincere; he 
may be misguided; he may be carried away by a spasm of 
popular excitement; he may be obeying the behest of 
party. But, none the less, indeed all the more for that, 
is he the dangerous enemy of the peace and prosperity 
of the United States. 

Mr. Everett's great oration, of which I spoke just now, 
was delivered in the few years preceding 1860, when the 
angry threatenings of civil war and disunion w^ere heard 
all round our national horizon. Mr. Everett called upon 
his countrymen, as it seemed for a time, in vain, to forget, 
to turn a deaf ear to these unpatriotic counsels, , to this 



25 

mad cry of treason and disunion, and return once more 
to the patriotic counsel of Washington. It seemed, for a 
time, as if the appeal were unheeded. Butt-he spasm of 
popular madness and rage passed by, and Washington 
resumed his place again as our supreme counsellor and 
leader. He became once more the example and idol of 
every American soldier and statesman, and the Farewell 
Address became once again the political Bible of every 
American. Doubt not that this shall happen again and 
again. Other temptations will come to us, and party spirit, 
like Satan sitting at the ear of Eve, will speak again its 
baleful counsel in the ear of the people. Popular excite- 
ment will be kindled by the lust of empire and passion 
for conquest. The eyes of the people may be dazzled 
for a time by a false and tinsel military glory. But while 
the portrait of Washington hangs in every village; while 
his statues adorn our chief cities; while his monument is 
found in every State; while his life is on the shelf of every 
home; while the detail of his great career is studied in 
every university; while his image is in the heart of every 
youth, the people will come back again to the wise, sober 
and just counsel in following which lies the path to a 
true glory and a true safety. The American people will 
never long go astray so long as to every great question of 
national policy or national duty they know what Wash- 
ington would have said, and know what Washington did 
say. 

If any man would test, as with a touch-stone, any 
party or political war-cry of to-day, let him think before 
he grow too enthusiastic if he can imagine George Washing- 
ton uttering it. If he can, he is safe enough to utter it 
himself. If he cannot, he had better try to find another. 

Who ever thinks of George Washington as stopping to 
consider popularity or public sentiment or political or per- 
sonal advantage to himself by pleasing the people when he 



26 

had to determine a question of duty? He was as unmoved 
by the breeze of popular opinion as the summit of the 
mountain that bears his name. It is for that reason that 
the reverence in which his countrymen hold him is as en- 
during and as unshaken as the mountain summit. 

I am no blind worshipper of the Past. I do not believe 
that Renown and Grace are dead. I am no pessimist or 
alarmist. I am certainly no misanthropist. While there 
are many men who have served their country better in 
their generation than I have in mine, I ^deld to no man in 
love for the Repul)lic, or in pride in my country, and in my 
countr}Tnen who are making to-day her honorable histor3^ 
We may err in our day. Our fathers erred in theirs. Yet 
our generation is l^etter than those who went before it. 
The coming generations will be better than we are. The 
Republic where every man has his share in the Govern- 
ment is better than the Monarchy, or the Oligarchy, or 
the Aristocracy. Our Republic is better than any other 
Republic. To-day is better than yesterday, and to-morrow 
will be better than to-day. But while each generation 
has its own virtues, each generation has its own dangers, 
and its own mistakes, and its own shortcomings. 

The difference between the generations of any country 
with a history is commonly not one of principle, but of 
emphasis. The doctrine of 1776, when we won our inde- 
pendence, planted our country on the eternal principles of 
equality of individuals and of nations in political rights, 
and declared that no man and no people had the right to 
judge of the fitness of any other for self-goverimient. In 
1787 the Constitution was builded on the doctrine that there 
were domains within which the Government had no right to 
enter, and that there were powers which the people would 
not commit to any authority, State or National. The 
doctrine of 1861 and the j^ears which followed, declared 
the natural right of every man to his own freedom, what- 



27 

ever might be his race or color; and the natural right of 
every man to make his dwelling wherever on the face of 
the earth he might think fit. These truths will, perhaps, 
be accepted to-day as generally as ihej were accepted 
then. But if accepted at all they are accepted by the 
intellect only, and not by the heart. They are not much 
talked about, except to ridicule them, to refine about 
them, or to find some plausible reason why they should 
not be applied. 

The orator of to-day puts his emphasis on Glory, on 
Empire, on Powder, on Wealth. We live under, and love, 
and we still shed our heart's blood for the same flag 
which floated over our fathers, and for which they were 
ready to die. But it sometimes seems that the flag has a 
different meaning, whether it float oA'er the Capitol or 
the ship of war, or the regiment on the march, or the public 
assembly. We no longer speak of it, except coldly and 
formally, as the s\inbol of Liberty ; but only as the symbol 
of power, or of a false, cheap, tinsel glory. 

I think the popular reverence for Washington, and Lin- 
coln, and for Sumner, and for Webster, is not abated. But 
}'et few political speakers quote to-day the great sentences 
which made them so famous, or the great principles to 
which they devoted their lives. 

AVhile, as I said, I have a profound respect for the opinion 
of my countrymen, it is not for that opinion formed in ex- 
citement or in haste or under pressure of political necessity. 
It is for the opinion formed, as Washington formed his, 
soberly, quietly, calmly, through sober, second thought. 

There is scarcely a shabby or sorry story of any 
country, certainly in the history of free nations, which is not 
a story of a popular delusion in which for a time nearly the 
whole community shared. The martyrdom of Socrates, 
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the persecution which 
drove the Pilgrims to Leyden, the witchcraft delusion, the 



28 

Compromise measures, the brief rise and spread of Know- 
Nothingism, all represent completely the desire of the peo- 
ple for the time being. 

There have been many such delusions in the history of the 
American people. But, so far, the American people have 
outgrown them, have repented of them, and have atoned 
for them. Indeed we can hardly lament that they have 
happened, when we think that if they had not happened 
the sublime repentance and atonement also would not 
have happened. We may lament the long and gloomy and 
terrible years of Slavery and of Rebellion ; and yet without 
Slavery and Rebellion we should have never known the 
heroism of the American people, or the quality of our 
splendid youth of 1861. We cannot explain why it is that 
an omnipotent and benignant Providence has suffered 
evil to exist in the universe He has created. But at least 
this is true. Without evil there could have been no virtue ; 
without the possibility of sin, there could have been no 
possibility of righteousness; without the Athenian mob, 
there could have been no Socrates; without George III 
and Lord Nortli, there could have been no Washington; 
without Slavery and Rebellion, there could have been no 
Lincoln. 

Another lesson the Republic may learn from Wash- 
ington is its sensitiveness to the individual touch. I do 
not think that it would be true if I were to say that the 
moral power of a single will and a single character is as 
strong in a popular Government as in a Monarchy or a 
Despotism. But I am sometimes tempted to say so when 
I think of the many instances where the whole current of 
our history has been turned by one man. 

I should like, if I had time, to give a great many ex- 
amples, easih" to be found, where the fate of a nation, and 
many more where the fate of a generation has depended 
upon the will and the purpose and the character of a sin- 



29 

gle individual. Many of Washington's contemporaries 
believed that but for the confidence felt in him the con- 
flict with I^]ngland could not have been maintained. Mr. 
JefTerson, I think it was, said later: "We can all hang to- 
gether, so long as we have you to hang to." It does not 
seem likely that the great political revolution which over- 
threw the Federal party after its twelve years of power, 
could have been accomplished but for the individual skill 
of Jefferson. I suppose most lawyers agree that but for 
the interpretation of the Constitution, supported by the 
great Judge Marshall, and carried into effect by his au- 
thority, the mechanism of our Constitution would have 
failed. The spot where I am now speaking would, in 
my opinion, as I think can be clearly established, have 
been at this moment part of a great slave-holding Empire 
but for the far-reaching sagacity and untiring energy of 
Rufus Putnam, the founder and father of Ohio, who put 
a new life into the dead Ordinance which consecrated this 
region to religion, education, and Liberty, and himself led 
the first colony down the Ohio to Marietta. There have 
been in our own da}^ great measures pregnant with his- 
tory, and with the fate of parties, won or lost by a single 
vote. 

Washington is by no means the only conspicuous ex- 
ample in history, God be thanked, of a man whose public 
conduct was determined absolutely by the sense of duty. 
But he is the most conspicuous and lofty example. He is 
the best example of absolute conscientiousness accom- 
panied by unerring wisdom in a place of power, where his 
action determined the fate of a nation, and was successful 
in achieving the most fortunate results. 

The fate of the nation depends in the last resort on in- 
dividual character. Everything in human government, 
like everything in individual conduct, depends, in the 
end, upon the sense of duty. Whatever safeguards may 



• 30 

be established, however comphcated or well adjusted the 
mechanism, you come to a place somewhere where safety 
depends upon somebody having the will to do right when 
it is in his power and may be his interest to do wrong. 
When the people were considering the adoption of the 
Constitution of the United States, one of our wisest states- 
men said that the real and only security for a Republic is 
when the rulers have the same interest as the people. If 
they have not, constitutional restraints will break down 
somewhere, except for the sense of duty of the rulers. 

All elections depend upon this principle. You may 
multiply election officers and returning boards, you may 
provide for an appeal to courts of first resort or last 
resort. But in the end you must come somewhere to a 
point where the sense of public duty is stronger than party 
spirit, or your election is but a sort of fighting, or, if not 
that, a sort of cheating. The same thing is true of the 
individual voter, or of the legislator who is to elect the 
Senator, or the governor who is to appoint the judge, or 
the executive officer, or the judge who is to interpret the 
Constitution or the statute and decide the cause, or the 
juror who is to find the fact. On these men depend the 
safety and the permanence of the Republic. On these 
men depend life, liberty, and property. And yet each 
of them has to make that choice. Each has to decide 
whether he will be influenced by ambition or by party 
spirit or the desire for popular favor or the fear of popular 
disfavor or the love of money, on the one side, or by the 
sense of duty on the other. 

So, in the last resort, the destiny of the Republic, like 
the destiny of the individual '(and, in the case of an in- 
dividual, character and destiny are the same thing), de- 
pends upon individual will. Will the individual will 
choose what is right and not what is wrong? Now this 
choice is largely affected by what we call strength of will ; 



31 

by that habit of the soul which enables man to adhere'to 
its deliberate purposes and principles, formed when reason 
is unaffected by passion or by desire, against the pressure 
and excitement of an immediate demand ; that (character 
of will which, as Wordsworth says in his "Happy Warrior" — 

' ' in the heat of conflict keeps the law 
In cahnness made, and sees what it foresaw." 

The great single purpose of moral education, must be to 
induce the will to adhere to its general, permanent and 
deliberately conceived purpose, in spite of the motives 
which appeal to it with special strength at the time of the 
choice or action. In other words, to give a strength to 
resolution which will overcome the strength of temptation. 

Of course, the first and perhaps the greatest thing to be 
accomplished is to get habit upon the side of virtue. 
"Happy is the man whose habits are his friends." To 
Washington no duty, however obscure, was unimportant, 
and no deviation from duty, however trifling, was pos- 
sible. 

I said just now, quoting from a great orator, that a few 
great men who have lived wholly for their country and 
not at all for themselves, and who alone can be thought of 
for comparison with Washington, appear in human annals 
like five or six lighthouses on as many thousand miles of 
coast. Even to complete that list men must go to Roman 
or Grecian story, where you cannot verify the record. How 
much of their glory Plutarch's characters owe to Plutarch, 
no critic can tell you to-day. 

All the great men of antiquity, who in the boldest imagi- 
nation might be compared with Washington, failed in accom- 
plishing their desire for their country. Epaminondas died 
in battle. Socrates died by public sentence. Aristides 
was ostracized and banished. Cato died a suicide and an 
exile. The destruction of the Republic he served speedily 
followed the death of each. 



32 

In later times Wellington was the instrument of saving 
Europe from the ambition of Napoleon. He was a high 
example of sincerity and strength and unselfishness in 
peace. But he had at his command the resources of a 
great Empire, and the indomitable English military spirit, 
indomitable from the beginning of her history save by the 
power which Washington organized and led. No man can 
/ doubt that with Wellington's resources Washington could 
have accomplished Wellington's results. No one can say 
that with Washington's irsources Wellington could have 
accomplished the results of Washington. 

But his achievement in war is the least of Washington's 
title to glory. Through his influence a great Republic was 
constructed and inaugurated on principles unknown until 
his time to history. He laid the foundation of om' Empire 
not on military strength, but on Liberty and Law. The 
Constitution framed by the Convention over which he 
presided, which would not have been adopted but for his 
influence, and which he inaugurated, was a new and un- 
tried experiment, without either example or model in 
human history. Wellington, on the other hand, was a 
defender of the existing order of things. Many an abuse 
and injustice was prolonged through his influence. 

No American, I think no lover of virtue anywhere, 
would seek to diminish or to darken the glory of Alfred, 
that "King to Justice dear" — 

' ' Mirror of Princes, indigent renown 
Might search the "starry ether for a crown 
Equal to his deserts." 

The glory of Alfred is ours also. The laws he gave have 
come down to us. We are of the blood and lineage of the 
country where for more than a thousand years the descend- 
ants of the great Saxon have occupied the throne. We have 
certainly no desire to cultivate that temper which, when- 



33 

ever goodness or greatness anywhere be mentioned, is eager 
always to declare that something or somebody else is better. 
But the witnesses whom we have cited, who declared Wash- 
ington's primacy among mankind, are English witnesses 
of the highest title to be believed. Not one of them has 
given his judgment without considering the name of King 
Alfred. 

We may concede to King Alfred perhaps an integrity 
and an unselfish tlevotion to his country unsurpassed even 
by that of Washington himself. But it is to be remembered 
that the difficult task of rallying the people of England 
to the expulsion of a band of piratic invaders, was far less 
than of sustaining a civilized warfare for eight years against 
the fleets and armies and inexhaustible treasure of Great 
Britain. When Alfred won his throne he gained a kingly 
power. He had a kingly power at his command. He 
had not, as Washington had, to reconcile hostile factions, 
to bring into accord jealous and rival States, to inaugurate 
a Government, the like of which was to that time un- 
known to the experience of mankind. We can not only 
believe, we can be sure that in Alfred's place Washington 
would have ccomplished everything that Alfred did. No 
man can be sure that in Washington's place Alfred would 
have been able to accomplish what Washington did. 

One figure remains, and one alone, who in the opinion of 
mankind may share with Washington his lofty pinnacle. 
His is an American name also ; a name among the priceless 
treasures of the great State within whose borders we come 
together. 

Never were two men more unlike in every lineament 
that made up their mental and physical portraiture than 
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They seemed 
to come to the same high place from opposite quarters and 
by diverse paths. Washington, with his quiet and grave 
manner, with his seriousness, his earnestness, with the 



34 

stately beauty and dignity of his person and behavior, 
has been claimed by Englishmen as an admirable example 
of an Englishman. The awkward and ungainly Lincoln, 
with his wit and his jesting and his homely proverbs, his 
stories as pithy and to the point as the fables of ^sop, his 
shrewd management of men, his tenderness, his knowledge 
of human nature in every variety and condition, was, if 
ever man was, a typical American. Washington was a 
born Aristocrat, who had learned by the experience of life 
the justice and the beauty of Democracy. Lincoln was 
the child of the people, who had learned by the experience 
of life the value of order and strong Government. 

"His was no lonely mountain peak of mind 
Thrusting to thin air o 'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind. 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars, 
Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting morn ward still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature 's equal scheme deface 
And Thwart her genial will; 

He knew to abide his time, 

And can his fame abide 

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,' 

rill the wise years decide. ' ' 

Washington had little poetry or imagination in him. 
He accepted and lived by the simplest maxims of morals 
and duty. He did not seem to care for the great things 
in literature or poetry. You do not find him quoting 
the noble sentences of the Declaration, although he did 
so much to make it real. Lincoln was an idealist. He 
was penetrated to the very depth of his soul with those 
eternal idealities. They moved and stirred him like a 
note of lofty music. But yet to his mind they were as 
real and practical and undoubted as the multiplication 



35 

table, or the Ten Coininandiuents. No Republic could live 
long, o- deserve to live long, that was not founded on 
them. He declared on that fateful journey to Washington, 
on his way to be inaugurated, that he was willing to be 
assassniated, if need be, for the doctrine that all govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
governed, and that no man, and no people, had the right 
to judge of the fitness for self-government of any other. 
And he was assassinated for it. 

Each of these men embodied what was best in his 
countrymen in his generation. Each was the first citizen 
among a people who were like him. Each wrought in ac- 
cord with his time. Washington more than any other 
man was the creator of a nation, of which Lincoln, more 
than any other man, was the Saviour. It will be for a 
later generation, not for us who remember Lincoln, to 
assign the precedence to either. Of one thing we may be 
sure, knowing the modesty so characteristic of both, that 
each, were he consulted, would yield the palm to the other. 

Washington was a good neighbor and friend, hospitable 
and charitable. He loved his Mother and his Wife, and 
his kindred. He had companions and counsellors and 
correspondents. And yet, and yet, in spite of it all, he 
seems to me with his austere sense of duty and his free- 
dom from all disturbing influences and attractions, to 
have dwelt in a solitude — 

"Like as a ship, that through the ocean wide, 
By conduct of some star doth make her way." 

But after all, Washington has but one lesson for us; 
one lesson for the country; one lesson for each of his coun- 
trymen. It is the old lesson, older than history, old as 
Creation. That is that Justice, Veracity, Unselfishness, 
Character, lie at the foundation of all National and all 
Individual Greatness. Justice and Freedom are the Par- 



36 

ents of Fate. To the larger and surer vision there is no 
such thing as Fortune. Where these are we have no need 
to concern ourselves with what the day may bring forth. 
The product of the eternities will be secure. The cosmic 
results will be the same, whatever the daily event may be. 
It is to this that the story of George Washington is a per- 
petual witness to his countrymen. It will be their fault 
if they^do not make their country its perpetual witness 
to mankind. 



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